


cinders & crowns

by WhiteJackal



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Rule 63, also in which the stepmother is the absolute worst, but everyone else stays the same, genderbent cinderella, genderbent fairytales, in which cinderella and her prince are genderbent, rule 63 cinderella, rule 63 fairytales, watch out for the abusive triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 14:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10164710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteJackal/pseuds/WhiteJackal
Summary: a serving boy of ash & toil, known only by cruel names & abusive taunts.a princess of grace & poise, known only by the limitations & expectations placed upon her.OR, unkind reality & unexpected love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "there she had to do hard work from morning until evening, get up before daybreak, carry water, make the fires, cook, and wash. besides this, the sisters did everything imaginable to hurt her. they made fun of her, scattered peas and lentils into the ashes for her, so that she had to sit and pick them out again. in the evening when she had worked herself weary, there was no bed for her. instead she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes... she always looked dusty and dirty..." 
> 
> —the grimm brothers' "cinderella"

“Cinders!”

“Cinders, I’m ready for my breakfast!”

“Come here, you lazy, _stupid_ child!”

Ellion—for that was his true name, though no one had called him as such in many years—crawled out of the hearth, limbs stiff with cold, waiting until he was near enough to the table to stand. He gripped the corner, pulling himself to his feet with a wince. His ears rang with the shrill cries of his stepmother and stepsisters. He dusted off his ragged trousers and tunic, ashes and cinders falling to the kitchen floor. He caught a glimpse of himself in the kitchen mirror: golden curls—more brown than yellow from the cinders and dirt caked in his thick locks—and dark eyes, one rimmed in fresh bruises and both red and tired, and a plain, common face—grimy and freckled and brown and skinny—greeted him. He hated the mirror, but his stepmother had one hung in every room in the house, even those where she rarely ventured, such as the kitchen. The only face to reflect in the kitchen mirror was Ellion’s more often than not, and his was a poor sight indeed.

_Mother often called me handsome_ , he reminisced. _She named me her ‘little prince’… But I’m Cinders now and only Cinders, and that little prince is gone._

“CINDERS!”

His stepmother’s voice cracked with rage, and footsteps clacked against the entrance hall above Ellion’s head.

“Oh, no,” he whispered.

He hurried back to the hearth, setting logs atop the ashes to start the breakfast cooking fire. His hands trembled. Had he overslept? He glanced behind him at the small, barred windows across the kitchen near the top of the stone ceiling. Light barely filtered into the room, just enough to speak of the earliest hours of dawn. Then he heard the thunder, and he groaned and worked at the fire even faster. He _had_ overslept, fooled by the cloudy darkness of the kitchen.

His stepmother’s sharp footfalls approached the kitchen door just as Ellion sparked a flame for the breakfast fire. He rushed across the room, barely filling the kettle with water and hanging it above the small flames before the door banged open above him at the top of the kitchen staircase.

Lady Amarilla’s slim form silhouetted against the light from the better-lit entrance hall. Ellion stiffened and halted in his work. His stepmother glided down the staircase with a gait that did not betray the anger from before, but Ellion knew not to be fooled by her supposed tranquility. As she drew closer to him, he could see the glint of cold rage in her gray eyes, mixed with the disgust always present in her looks reserved for Ellion and dirt on her shoes.

He bowed and kept his gaze lowered. “Good morning, Mistress.”

( _She’d 'suggested' such a form of greeting and address just after his twelfth birthday. She had been married to Ellion’s father for nearly a month, and Amarilla had already begun her changes to the house, including the dismissal of the household staff after she discovered her husband’s inability to support both her extravagant spending and a full staff of servants. She sent the kind men and women whose ancestors had served Ellion and his family for generations away with his mother’s décor and portraits, replacing them with paintings of her and her daughters and the new portrait she had commissioned of the family: Lady Amarilla and her daughters, Mecinda and Vilynn, and her husband—Ellion’s father—Sir Gerold. “You will call me ‘Mistress’ now, as is only appropriate,” she’d snarled. She had first given him the look of disgust that day. It was the first time anyone had ever looked at him as though he were not the heir of Lady Allycia, one of the most well-respected and well-loved noblewomen in the kingdom. It would not be the last. “I do not want anyone to confuse you as one of my children.”_ )

Amarilla lifted a dark eyebrow. “Did you not hear my calls, boy?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Ellion replied. “Your and your daughters’ breakfasts will be ready soon, Mistress.” His heart sounded in his throat, choking him.

“Oh, _will_ they? Then why do I only hear the bubbling of the kettle? Why do I not smell baked bread or sizzling ham?”

Ellion swallowed thickly, and he wrung his trembling hands behind his back. “I… Mistress, I promise to—”

She cut him off with a backhanded blow to his cheek. Though he was still skinny and underfed, at sixteen he was strong enough to keep from crumbling when she struck him. But her ring cut into his cheek. He didn’t have to fight to withhold a gasp of pain; he had felt much worse. She grabbed his chin and turned his face towards her and pulled it down to her level.

“You lazy, _stupid_ child,” she spat. “Your incompetence knows no limits. You disgust me.” She wrinkled her nose and withdrew her bruising grip. “You are an ugly, horrible urchin. Make yourself presentable before stepping amongst your betters.”

Ellion had heard all those insults, all those cutting names, countless times in the four years since Amarilla had taken command of his once-happy home. But they still twisted at his heart. He wished he was harder and less inclined towards sentimentality at times. He _was_ weak and stupid.

“Yes, Mistress. I beg your pardon for my stupidity.”

She wiped her hands on the handkerchief she pulled from her dressing gown pocket. Ellion’s cheeks burned when he saw the back and gray and brown on the white fabric, all from simply _touching_ him twice. He felt the grime more acutely than before, and he wanted to bathe more than anything. But that would not be allowed for another week at least.

“Finish our breakfasts, _Cinders_ , and bring tea to my husband.” Sir Gerold was never Ellion's father when Amarilla mentioned him to her stepson. “He will require you to dress him. Then you will attend to _my_ needs.”

The words chilled him, because he knew exactly what they meant, so that all he could do was nod before he could finally whisper: “Y-Yes, Mistress.”

Her eyes roamed over him again. “Obey me regarding your cleanliness.” She turned away, walking up the kitchen stairs to the main house with swishing silks and lace. “I don’t wish to be forced to _bathe_ myself again.”

The door slammed, and Ellion retched. 

* * *

 

Ellion felt out of place upstairs—he always had since his mother’s death, but especially since his father’s remarriage. He was ordered to tread upon the marble and rosewood floors, expected to fetch and clean and serve amongst his father’s new family, but he knew he might be scolded for being too loud or too dirty or too _present_ in his stepmother or stepsisters’ presence.

He slipped through the halls quietly and quickly. He delivered his stepsisters’ breakfasts uneventfully. They were engaged in brushing one another’s hair and picking over their full trunks and wardrobes of, what they believed to be, completely old and out-of-fashion gowns, skirts, bodices, shoes, and laces.

“I shan’t even begin to describe the _atrocifying_ nature of this hat,” Mecinda moaned, tossing the offending accessory away. Ellion had to dodge out of its path as he crossed the cluttered bedchamber to Mecinda’s dining nook. He set both girls’ breakfasts upon the glass-topped table, trying to ignore the shelves of trinkets and fashion plates and ribbons that had once held his books and paints when this was _his_ room.

“You complain over nothing,” Vilynn contributed. Her petticoats were piled about her on Mecinda’s bed, her longer legs curled up beneath her as she sat behind Mecinda, running a china brush through her sister’s long, black tresses. Vilynn was younger than Mecinda by two years, but she was taller and leaner. She towered over Ellion in her heeled boots, though they were the same age. Vilyyn took great delight in that fact. “ _My_ hats are in far worse shape than yours!”

Mecinda huffed, lifting her rounded chin and rolling her gray eyes. “Pfft. The conditions of your hats don’t matter as much as mine. _I_ am the eldest, after all, and _OW_!”

Vilynn yanked through Mecinda’s hair again. “Oh, I’m sorry!” She did it again, this time pulling back on Mecinda so hard that she toppled back onto her younger sister’s lap, crying out and holding her head as Vilynn shoved her off her legs and onto the rumpled bedding. “Did that _hurt_?”

Ellion exited quickly after pouring the girls’ respective teas, leaving his stepsisters to their shrieking and name-calling and hair-pulling.

* * *

 

Lady Amarilla was in her bath when he arrived in her room, so he was able to set her small breakfast table and scamper out without speaking with her. But as his hand gripped the doorknob once more, her lilting voice called out from behind her painted bathing screen: “Return here soon, boy.”

Ellion’s throat closed, and he struggled to squeak out his reply: “Yes, Mistress.”

He sounded like the pathetic, frightened mouse he was.

* * *

 

Sir Gerold’s chambers were the same locale as they’d always been—he alone in the house had not been relocated upon Lady Amarilla’s arrival—though the décor inside was considerably different than the days before his second marriage. Ellion remembered that Mamma always let Father do what he willed with his chambers—he was home so rarely, she said, that she owed him a sanctuary to his tastes in his home. Lady Amarilla’s inclinations were not the same. Where once Sir Gerold’s collections of maps and foreign gaming tables and antiquated currencies lined the walls and desk and mantle of his room, family portraits and mirrors and silk draperies decorated the chamber. Gone was the smell of oak and spices and leather Ellion recalled so strongly from his childhood, replaced with the scent of flowers and women’s perfume and, most especially, liquor.

“You brought the wine, didn’t you?” Sir Gerold’s voice was slow and half-slurred, and Ellion knew only some of those qualities to be from lingering drowsiness, despite his father’s continued perch upon his mahogany bed. The drink cart, laden with both Lady Amarilla’s crystal decanters and common bottles of whisky, wine, and mead, stood sentry beside Sir Gerold’s bed.

“Yes, sir,” Ellion answered. He opted to set the tray of food upon his father’s breakfast table—though he knew that if Sir Gerold broke his fast at all, he would prefer to break it at his desk, despite Lady Amarilla’s preferences—and quickly poured the desired wine into one of the decanters. No one had to tell him to bring it anymore.

Sir Gerold reached for the red liquid nearly before Ellion finished pouring it. From the hungry look in his blue eyes, he would have rather Ellion just handed him the bottle instead of making him wait for even the smallest of time. His grip on the decanter shook as he poured into his dirty, used glass.

“S-Sir…” Ellion half-reached for the glass, but he didn’t dare truly take it from his father without permission. “Sir… Sir, wouldn’t you like the clean glass I brought for—”

Sir Gerold pulled back from Ellion, sloshing some wine on his bedsheets. The sight made Ellion cringe. He would need to scrub and scrub to get out those stains, if he was ever able to do so. He might be forced to throw them out, which would prompt Amarilla to withhold meals from him until she felt he had ‘made up’ for the money he cost her and her family. When she first began her reign over Sir Gerold’s household, Ellion had barely eaten for six months. Weight had fallen off his frame, leaving him naught but bones and sickly pallor. Her ban on his food had started a wretched chain. His emaciation made him weak, and his weakness made him shaky, and his shakiness made him clumsy, and his clumsiness made him break things or fail at tasks set to him by his stepmother; his failures led to less food, which kept the whole, horrid cycle in perpetuation until he finally learned to work and press through exhaustion and hunger.

He rarely starved at sixteen, not half of what he had at twelve, but Amarilla’s mandate still occasionally left him aching and empty at day’s end. Her laws regarding Ellion’s eating—including her decree that he should only eat the scraps from the family’s table, never a full serving of his own—caused him more anxiety and trepidation than anything else in the house.

_Excepting his stepmother’s bedchamber._

“My glass is fine,” Sir Gerold insisted. He took another swallow of wine, completely draining the glass. He waved at Ellion with the empty glass, attempting to swing his legs over the side of the bed and sit up on his rumpled sheets.

“Allow me, sir.” Ellion took his father’s arm, helping him from his bed. Sir Gerold shrugged out of his grip, staggering away towards his dressing table, and never looked at his son once.

“Let’s dress for the day, boy,” Gerold mumbled, running a hand through his matted gray hair.

“Yes, sir.” His father’s wardrobe was already ajar, and several coats lay on the floor. Ellion replaced them in the wardrobe and took out an outfit for his father’s day. “Will you be going into town today, sir?”

Ellion could not see his father from inside the wardrobe, but he could hear him sigh deeply. “Likely not, boy.”

The boy said nothing but continued his work. He returned to his father, clothing in hand, presenting the items for approval. Sir Gerold waved his acquiescence distractedly, barely glancing at the clothes before him, just as Ellion had known he would. But before dressing Sir Gerold, Ellion moved to collect the razor to shave his father. But Gerold stopped him before he could say a word. He waved him away, again without looking at him.

“Leave my beard, boy.” Ellion nodded and reached for Sir Gerold’s dressing gown. Gerold leaned to allow the boy’s work, though he looked distracted as he continued speaking. His voice seemed to be far away, and his eyes seemed to see worlds apart from Ellion and the dark, cluttered bedchamber. He sighed again. “I’d let it grow long and full on mountain trips. Remember, boy?”

Sometimes his father would forget to treat Ellion as though he weren’t a fixture from his past—from the life before Amarilla. Ellion held back his thrill of emotion when those moments came, afraid to break the spell over his father’s heart with too many words. He simply continued dressing Sir Gerold.

“Yes, sir.”

“Lyci couldn’t find my lips when I first returned once.” He smiled a little to himself, his voice faint and amused as he remembered old things, including his fond nickname for his wife. Ellion’s smile grew a little, too. He missed his mother desperately, but to hear his father speak of her made him happy. “She said, ‘Who is this mountaineer who has replaced my husband? Where have you taken him?’ She loved to make jokes, remember?”

Ellion nodded, swallowing down the emotion again. “Yes, sir.”

Amarilla forbade him to talk of his mother, but his father had asked him—his father _wanted_ to talk about Allycia—and he would chance any sort of retribution for the crime to keep the rare moment of paternal camaraderie alive. After all, what else did he have but memories in his life that might make him happy, might keep him the cheerful, kind, decent ‘little prince’ his mother loved and wanted him to remain?

And what else could possibly be as important?

**Author's Note:**

> part 1 of the rule 63 cinderella story. 
> 
> it ends a bit suddenly, i know. BUT that's just going to have to be fine because i wanted to post what i already have of this story. i'm pretty sure i'll alternate POVs between cinders & the princess, but i'm not completely sure yet. ANYWAY hope ya'll like this so far! if you have any questions let me know, and i'll make sure to answer them in the next installment/chapter.


End file.
